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Good Grief!
Jun. 16th, 2023 03:23 pmWhat's your griefstyle? What do you do to mourn those people, animals, relationships, experiences and situations that you know or believe you can no longer enjoy?
Maybe you cry and mope in a corner. Maybe you scream in anger and frustration. Maybe you turn to booze, chocolate or other substances, legal or otherwise. Maybe you seek solace in your friends or your faith community, or in nature, music, journalling or the arts. I suppose any of these things can be helpful, to varying degrees, at various times in one's life, depending on who you are and what you're all about.
How about a wind phone?There's already one that I know of in the Outaouais:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/chelsea-wind-phone-1.6621595
Soon there will be another one more centrally located right in Ottawa, in a park for cancer patients, cancer survivors and their loved ones:
https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-100-ottawa-morning/clip/15991698-how-wind-phone-help-people-connect-loved-ones
The basic idea is simple: a public, landline-type telephone that's not connected. But you can still lift up the receiver, dial or press numbers on a keypad, and talk to whomever you wish to imagine being at the other end.
The most famous wind phone in the world and the one that's generally credited as being the original, was installed in March 2011 at the foot of Kujira-yama (Mountain of the Whale) just outside of Otsuchi Japan, in the wake of the disastrous tsunamis in that area:
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/wind-telephone
Fast forward nine years. I think we all know what happened in March 2020, don't we?
Almost everyone was grieving. If they weren't actually grieving for people who had died or who were seriously ill, they were at the very least grieving for the finer things and even routine aspects of life that they could no longer enjoy. And it was difficult to properly process that grief. Drive-through funerals? Memorial services via Zoom? They're not for everyone.
Libraries were closed too. But I ordered quite a few books online. Including Laura Imai Messina's book The Phone Box at the Edge of the World, published by Manilla Press, in association with Goldsboro Books, in July 2020. It's fiction, but inspired by the Japanese wind phone installed in 2011. I found it extremely moving, even though inspirational-type literature is not normally my thing. It's not Pollyannish at all, but sort of quietly poignant. It has stayed with me.
Then last summer in Ireland, I bought and read Sorry for Your Trouble: The Irish Way of Death, by Ann Marie Hourihane (c2021). That one's non-fiction but highly readable; anecdotes about death, dying and funeral rites, where the author's sly Irish humour shows through on every page.
Finally, just recently, I read another work of fiction that I bought through Goldsboro Books, End of Story by Louise Swanson (who also writes as Louise Beech). It's mostly set in the year 2035, in a world where fiction is completely banned and those who had made a living in the arts are retrained for other things. Our heroine, Fern Dostoy, had been a best-selling author of a highly influential, prize-winning book. Reading bedtime stories to your kids is banned. The only bookstore in town now sells only non-fiction and one day a month is an amnesty day when people can turn in any works of fiction they may still have in their possession.
It's a powerful story about guilt and grief, especially women's guilt and grief. In fact, it is divided into five sections, each for one of the (supposed) five stages of grief: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance. There's a bit of a twist towards the end, which I almost dismissed as a cop-out; but I read on and was glad I did because the various strands of the storyline were brought to what I felt was a satisfying conclusion.
So anyway, would I use a wind phone? Probably not, but I think the more positive outlets we have for processing life's setbacks, the better. What's MY griefstyle? I'm still trying to figure that out!
Maybe you cry and mope in a corner. Maybe you scream in anger and frustration. Maybe you turn to booze, chocolate or other substances, legal or otherwise. Maybe you seek solace in your friends or your faith community, or in nature, music, journalling or the arts. I suppose any of these things can be helpful, to varying degrees, at various times in one's life, depending on who you are and what you're all about.
How about a wind phone?There's already one that I know of in the Outaouais:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/chelsea-wind-phone-1.6621595
Soon there will be another one more centrally located right in Ottawa, in a park for cancer patients, cancer survivors and their loved ones:
https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-100-ottawa-morning/clip/15991698-how-wind-phone-help-people-connect-loved-ones
The basic idea is simple: a public, landline-type telephone that's not connected. But you can still lift up the receiver, dial or press numbers on a keypad, and talk to whomever you wish to imagine being at the other end.
The most famous wind phone in the world and the one that's generally credited as being the original, was installed in March 2011 at the foot of Kujira-yama (Mountain of the Whale) just outside of Otsuchi Japan, in the wake of the disastrous tsunamis in that area:
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/wind-telephone
Fast forward nine years. I think we all know what happened in March 2020, don't we?
Almost everyone was grieving. If they weren't actually grieving for people who had died or who were seriously ill, they were at the very least grieving for the finer things and even routine aspects of life that they could no longer enjoy. And it was difficult to properly process that grief. Drive-through funerals? Memorial services via Zoom? They're not for everyone.
Libraries were closed too. But I ordered quite a few books online. Including Laura Imai Messina's book The Phone Box at the Edge of the World, published by Manilla Press, in association with Goldsboro Books, in July 2020. It's fiction, but inspired by the Japanese wind phone installed in 2011. I found it extremely moving, even though inspirational-type literature is not normally my thing. It's not Pollyannish at all, but sort of quietly poignant. It has stayed with me.
Then last summer in Ireland, I bought and read Sorry for Your Trouble: The Irish Way of Death, by Ann Marie Hourihane (c2021). That one's non-fiction but highly readable; anecdotes about death, dying and funeral rites, where the author's sly Irish humour shows through on every page.
Finally, just recently, I read another work of fiction that I bought through Goldsboro Books, End of Story by Louise Swanson (who also writes as Louise Beech). It's mostly set in the year 2035, in a world where fiction is completely banned and those who had made a living in the arts are retrained for other things. Our heroine, Fern Dostoy, had been a best-selling author of a highly influential, prize-winning book. Reading bedtime stories to your kids is banned. The only bookstore in town now sells only non-fiction and one day a month is an amnesty day when people can turn in any works of fiction they may still have in their possession.
It's a powerful story about guilt and grief, especially women's guilt and grief. In fact, it is divided into five sections, each for one of the (supposed) five stages of grief: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance. There's a bit of a twist towards the end, which I almost dismissed as a cop-out; but I read on and was glad I did because the various strands of the storyline were brought to what I felt was a satisfying conclusion.
So anyway, would I use a wind phone? Probably not, but I think the more positive outlets we have for processing life's setbacks, the better. What's MY griefstyle? I'm still trying to figure that out!
